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PHIN VADS provides standard vocabularies to CDC and its public health partners in one place. PHIN VADS is a web-based enterprise vocabulary system for accessing, searching, and distributing vocabularies used in public health and clinical care practice. It promotes the use of standards-based vocabulary to support the exchange of consistent information among public health partners. Currently, there are 189 code systems, 1,253 value sets, 80 views and more than 2 million concepts in PHIN VADS based on the code system/domain recommendations and value set recommendations from Health Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) C80 specification. Users can access and view vocabularies in the context of public health with file download options for Value Sets, Value Set Concepts, Views and Groups available in a tab-delimited text format and also in Microsoft Excel format (additional download file formats are scheduled for a future release of PHIN VADS). The main purpose of PHIN VADS is to distribute the value sets associated with HL7 message implementation guides.

Release notes detailing changes of content and/or application updates in the current PHIN VADS release can be found in the PHIN VADS application via the ‘Release Notes’ link in the left navigation pane.

Frequently Used PHIN VADS Content (Hot Topics)

PHIN VADS provides quick access to commonly and frequently used value sets and messaging guide vocabulary views in the home page (http://phinvads.cdc.gov) under “Hot Topics.” Some of the hot topics are listed below:

Navigation of PHIN VADS Content

Updates to the PHIN VADS application are planned for a future release to facilitate easier browsing of PHIN VADS content. Until such enhancements are released, the following PDF files provide bookmarks to value sets based on specific topics:

PHIN VADS Web Service

The PHIN VADS web site is powered by an open web service that can be directly consumed by third party applications. These web services are public and built upon open standards such as HL7 Common Terminology Services (CTS) and IHE Sharing Value Set (SVS).

The VADS Web Service consists of an interface that defines the web methods that are available, the domain objects that represent vocabulary information, and data transfer objects (DTOs) to transfer data to and from the web service. Custom programs, applications, or data extraction scripts can be written to directly use PHIN VADS Web Services.

Universal Authoring Framework (UAF)

The Universal Authoring Framework (UAF) tool is a Web based, thin client authoring tool built on ISO-11179 standards including a service layer built on the HL7 Common Terminology Services standard. The main purpose of UAF is to author and maintain the value sets present in PHIN VADS.

The tool provides users the following features:

Import their vocabulary or SDO vocabulary content into the database.

View any errors that occur during the import process.

Edit the data they upload, and then distribute their vocabulary through a publishing mechanism.

Multiple levels of governance and security exist in the tool, including role-based, application data, and functional levels of security.

Some additional advantages of the tool include versioning of value sets, quick authoring turnaround time of less than 24 hours, historical tracking of database updates, and support of any file format when importing data so that no data preparation is required outside of the tool.

All of this translates into a tool that allows for faster loading of content by users who better own and isolate their work while making data integrity easily maintained.

Contacting Us

To report issues or questions contact the VADS team at phinvs@cdc.gov. Enhancement Requests/Defect Reports can also be submitted to the PHIN VADS team using this same email address with the subject header: Enhancement or Defect.